Hello from South Korea’s sad World Cup cheering section! This week, we talk about the unrest in China with Dr. Ting Guo, a scholar at the University of Toronto who studies religion, politics, and gender in transnational Asia. Ting is also great on Twitter and co-hosts a Mandarin podcast called "in-betweenness" (@shichapodcast) . [7:50] The protests in mainland China—and, in solidarity, throughout the world—began late last month, after an apartment fire killed ten people in the city of Urumqi and...
Dec 08, 2022•1 hr 7 min
Hello from the picket lines! This week, Jay and Tammy report on labor actions on the streets of Berkeley and Seoul. [4:30] First, Jay tells us what he’s heard from striking student workers at the University of California. More than forty-five thousand UAW union members are drawing attention to their financial precarity and austerity in academia. We parse the possible fault lines among this remarkably large group of workers: the relative resources and prestige of different UC campuses, disciplina...
Nov 23, 2022•1 hr
Hello from the Matt Levine fan club! This week, the writer and editor Max Read returns to discuss the disintegration of the tech world. 2:45 – First, Max and Jay explain what happened to cryptocurrency exchange FTX , founded by Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), and how its calamitous end has eroded people’s faith in crypto. We marvel at FTX’s narrative arc (“ Star Wars” and a Bahamian polycule !), the social network that enabled SBF’s messianic rise , and the material conditions in tech-business journali...
Nov 16, 2022•1 hr 23 min
Hello from the decline of the West! This week’s episode features a wonderful conversation with Minh-Ha T. Pham, a professor at Pratt who researches fashion labor under global capitalism and digital capitalism—and whose new book, Why We Can’t Have Nice Things , is out now. 3:45 – We begin by reminiscing about the era of the fashion blogger (including Minh-Ha herself ) and the role that young, transnational Asians played as cultural intermediaries for historically exclusive, white brands. Is there...
Nov 09, 2022•1 hr 5 min
Hello from Jay’s trick-or-treating route! This week, Jay listened to hours of affirmative-action arguments from the Supreme Court so that you (and we) didn’t have to. He recounts Ketanji Brown Jackson’s sharp line of questioning and lays out the progressives’ Catch-22. Does a third path reveal itself if we deny Harvard and its peers their institutional, “meritocratic” power? Is it true that Asian Americans are actually given a leg up in some academic environments? Next, we hear from Tammy, in Ko...
Nov 02, 2022•1 hr 11 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit goodbye.substack.com Hello from Tammy’s mysterious trip to Korea! In this bonus ep, we answer questions from our beloved subscribers. Thank you for getting us to ponder: * The political dimensions of K-12 school lotteries * A post-affirmative action world * Midterm election hotspots (plus: the effects of labor power and anti-Asian sentiment) * What Tammy and Jay have learned from ea…...
Oct 28, 2022•4 min
Hi from the science desk! Jay and Tammy chat this week with a very special guest, eco-apocalypse reporter Kendra Pierre-Louis. Her work has appeared on the How to Save a Planet podcast (RIP) and in The Atlantic and The New York Times , among other places . Kendra tells us about her non-traditional path to journalism, the trouble with climate journalism in many newsrooms, and the burden and opportunities of being a Black reporter on the “gloom beat.” How do we make environmental collapse feel rea...
Oct 26, 2022•1 hr 18 min
Hello from Tammy’s surfing hagwon! This week, we’re celebrating 1 MILLION DOWNLOADS! Sounds fake, we know, but Substack doesn’t lie. Thanks for tuning in to our ramblings for the past two and a half years—long live TTSG! At the top of the show, we listen to a posthumous podcast with New Yorker editor John Bennett and several of his writers. We reflect on “Bennettisms” about the editor-writer relationship and how writers can help their readers. Next, Tammy reports on the heightened military tensi...
Oct 19, 2022•1 hr 6 min
Hello from a U.S. neocolony! It’s just Tammy and Jay this week, trying not to obsess over surfing and wallpaper. We talk about the new Netflix show, “ Mo ,” which, despite its marketing, avoids many pitfalls of the mainstream immigrant tale. The show succeeds on account of its main character: the very flawed yet charismatic Mo, a Palestinian-American man with a pending asylum case, played by comedian and show creator Mo Amer. We also dig into what makes the city of Houston such a compelling and ...
Oct 12, 2022•1 hr 10 min
Hello from Mexico City! This week, we talk about the Iranian uprising with Kiana Karimi, a scholar , writer , and friend of the pod who has been active in the fight for women’s rights in Iran and its diaspora. But first, in other feminist news, Jay catches Tammy up on the latest high-stakes poker controversy , with its wonderful 🤢🤑 mix of money and misogyny. Kiana begins by reading from an essay in progress about the current unrest in Iran. Thousands of people across the country have been prot...
Oct 05, 2022•1 hr 13 min
Hello from a Korean sublet! This week, our friend Jennifer Wilson joins us to discuss the art of cultural criticism and test out some takes on James Harden, Gramsci, and Russia. First, we discuss Boston Celtics coach Ime Udoka’s suspension and the ongoing fallout. What can fans’ reactions teach us about today’s top sports commentators and the proliferation of meme culture? Then, we glide seamlessly into a discussion of Italian communist Antonio Gramsci . Jen talks about furthering his mission to...
Sep 28, 2022•1 hr 12 min
Hello from a beach in Busan! It’s just us this week, talking through the good, bad, and ugly of this week’s news cycle. Just before we recorded, the news dropped that Adnan Syed, the subject of the first season of the hit podcast “ Serial ,” was released from prison with a vacated conviction after 23 years. We grapple with the opportunity and ethical risks of narrative podcasts, especially when it comes to true crime. We also discuss the railway-union strike that was temporarily averted , thanks...
Sep 21, 2022•1 hr 7 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit goodbye.substack.com Hello from Tammy’s apartment! (Please forgive the less-than-stellar audio quality on this one.) For our latest TTSG book club meeting, Tammy is joined by the wonderful Lisa Hsiao Chen to discuss her debut novel “ Activities of Daily Living .” The book follows Alice, a Taiwanese American living in Brooklyn in her late thirties, as she simultaneously obsess…...
Sep 17, 2022•3 min
Hello from Seoul (both real and fictional)! This week, we welcome our friend and K-drama expert Jenny Wang Medina back to the pod to discuss the new Netflix hit “ Extraordinary Attorney Woo .” The legal-procedural K-drama follows an autistic attorney, Woo Young-woo, who joins the ranks of a high-powered law firm and quickly proves herself invaluable. It’s wholesome, marginally sea-themed, and set in a fantasy playground of the professional sphere. We discuss the hot-button issues in Korea that f...
Sep 14, 2022•1 hr 15 min
Hello from three time zones! This week, Tammy is joined by Debt Collective organizers Ann Larson and Eleni Schirmer to reflect on the movement that won historic relief from student debt. But first, we remember the great Barbara Ehrenreich, who passed last week. Ehrenreich was an author and activist best known for her bestselling book Nickel and Dimed , a hard-hitting yet beautifully written dive into the low-wage economy. She also made incredible contributions to leftist movements, from DSA to d...
Sep 07, 2022•1 hr 8 min
Hello from Washington state! This week, we’re joined by Silky Shah, executive director of Detention Watch Network and repeat pod guest, to chat about immigration (and, briefly, Nathan Fielder’s bizarre new show, “ The Rehearsal ”). We start by diving into Caitlin Dickerson’s exhaustive report, in The Atlantic , on the Trump administration's family-separation policy. We reflect on the unique horrors of that period, while locating them in a longer history of cruelty toward immigrants, up to the pr...
Aug 31, 2022•1 hr 14 min
Hello from Philly! We’re lucky to be joined this week by former podsquad member Andy Liu, for an in-depth chat about his three favorite things: sports, history, and Taiwan. First, we review the new Netflix documentary about Manti Te'o , the college-football star who fell from grace after being catfished a decade ago. We discuss the many failures that led to Te'o’s ostracization, as well as the role his race may have played in the way the media treated him. Next, Andy catches us up on the latest ...
Aug 24, 2022•1 hr 31 min
Hello from Mai's high-speed European train! This week, Tammy and Jay watch “ Free Chol Soo Lee ” and speak with Julie Ha, who co-directed the film with Eugene Yi. The new documentary follows Chol Soo Lee, a Korean man in San Francisco who was wrongfully convicted of murder in the 1970s, highlighting the pan-Asian movement for his release and his troubled readjustment to life outside. Julie discusses her admiration for the pathbreaking investigative journalist K.W. Lee, who brought public scrutin...
Aug 17, 2022•1 hr 12 min
Hello from the miserable gap between episodes of “Extraordinary Attorney Woo”! This week, Jay and Tammy are joined by the great Jia Tolentino, a writer at The New Yorker and the author of Trick Mirror . We start by talking about Jia’s recent piece on housing (= the rent is too damn high) on the worker-owned site “Hellgate” —and her dreams of organizing her building (not Tammy’s “white projects”) in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, New York. Then, we discuss two provocative essays Jia wrote on abortion aft...
Aug 10, 2022•1 hr 41 min
Hello from Tammy’s undisclosed location! The hosts start with a brief discussion of Leanna Louie, a law-and-order Democrat running for District 4 Supervisor in SF . What might she represent for the future of Asian-American politics? Then Jay and Tammy are joined by investigative journalist Ali Fowle to discuss Myanmar. The country’s military regime recently killed four prisoners, including well known pro-democracy activists Phyo Zeya Thaw and Ko Jimmy . These judicial executions , the first sinc...
Aug 03, 2022•1 hr 8 min
Hello from a walk-up apartment! This week, Tammy and Jay invite food-and-culture writer Wei Tchou to discuss trends in plant-based meat and beverages. Wei has written beautifully about fermenting tempeh , making her own soy sauce , and learning to love baijiu . In our first investigative segment (lol), we send Jay out on the streets of Norcal. The U.S. chain Peet’s Coffee has proclaimed this the “Summer of Jelly,” dropping a new “boba-like” drink addition that’s been deemed cultural appropriatio...
Jul 27, 2022•1 hr 14 min
Hello from mild SF and summerpocalypse NYC! This week, Jay and Tammy discuss what’s been on their minds this week: the state of the Democratic party and the shifting culture around drug use in the United States. Plus: Jill Biden on tacos and bo gadas! We read New York mag columnist Jonathan Chait’s critique of Biden and ask why the administration has such a failed legislative strategy. What, if anything, is keeping Democrats from taxing the rich? What does a recent poll tell us about the party a...
Jul 20, 2022•1 hr 11 min
Hello! This week, Tammy and Jay remember John Bennet, a former New Yorker editor and Columbia journalism professor who passed away this week: They are then joined by policy analyst Paul Williams to discuss the concept of social housing and its potential in the United States. How did we arrive at a political consensus so averse to public housing of any kind? Can other countries’ programs help us reclaim housing as a social good rather than a market commodity? What can we learn from current social...
Jul 13, 2022•1 hr 14 min
Resending because of a tech glitch. Thanks for your patience. Hello from Cleveland! This week, we speak with friend of the pod Danny Bessner, an historian of U.S. foreign relations and co-host of the podcast American Prestige. Danny discusses his new Harper’s essay , which argues for a departure from American exceptionalism, once and for all. He lays out the two main camps in U.S. foreign policy: liberal internationalists, who advocate for the maintenance of U.S. global hegemony, and restrainers...
Jul 06, 2022•1 hr 28 min
Hello from Jeju-do! This (harrowing news) week, the podsquad welcomes repeat guest Jenny Wang Medina —Emory professor, TV addict, literary translator , and hallyu expert—for a discussion of Jay’s favorite recent K-drama, Our Blues . We talk about abortion, matriarchal haenyeo , regionalism, debt, and goose fathers. What makes Jeju-do such a compelling site for fiction? How are dreams deferred in the East Asian Tigers and other sites of rapid capitalist development? Plus: Jenny’s analysis of the ...
Jun 28, 2022•1 hr 6 min
Hi from Chicago! This week, Jay and Tammy talk about a rising tide of worker organizing, rising gas prices (ugh), and a new, very timely TV show. Tammy reports back from her trip to Labor Notes (along with pod listener Matt), starring Amazon Labor Union, Starbucks Workers United, and Tío Bernie. What kind of union moment are we in? Then, what’s the relationship between inflation and the labor market , and what does it mean for electoral politics in the US (and around the world)? How can the left...
Jun 21, 2022•1 hr
Hello from Andy’s couch! We take a break from the NBA finals to record Andy’s last ep as co-host : ( Per his request, the podsquad talks Amy Chua’s now decade-old book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother — and argues about everything in it. Is the Chinese Tiger Mother actually a thing? Does it matter that Chua is an upper-class second-generation parent? What kind of Asian America does the book describe? Can the satirical bent of the book erase its meanness and cultural essentialism? (Note: we focus...
Jun 14, 2022•1 hr 41 min
Hello from a 24-hour layover! Tammy returns from her travels and tells us about hanging out with cool Asians at the International Federation of Journalists conference in Oman. Then, we discuss the latest on the Uvalde shootings and the increasingly outrageous reports that local police officers and government officials are bullying parents and evading even the tiniest bit of accountability. How does the Uvalde massacre bolster arguments for police defunding and abolition? Where does abolition int...
Jun 07, 2022•1 hr 25 min
Tammy’s off for the week! Jay and Andy are joined by The New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner to talk about his viral interrogations of subjects from John Mearsheimer to Amy Wax to that unhinged Covid conspiracy theorist from spring 2020 ; checking in on the bleak pessimism surrounding last week’s horror in Uvalde, TX; and a wide discussion of this year’s NBA playoffs featuring the Boston Celtics and the Golden State Warriors, tipping off this week! Thanks for listening! Please subscribe and reach out to...
May 31, 2022
Hello from the Betaverse! This week, we briefly touch on headline news from Asia: that a jet-lagged Biden pledged military support for Taiwan against China—a comment the State Department is now trying to walk back, lol. Then, onto the main event: a deep-dive on the new film, Everything Everywhere All At Once, starring Michelle Yeoh, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ke Huy Quan, and Stephanie Hsu, directed by the Daniels. And yes, we spoil it! Why did one of the hosts hate it? Were the martial arts any good? Wa...
May 24, 2022•1 hr 53 min
